Top 5 Meal Delivery Service Comparison

HelloFresh aims to provide each and every household in its 11 markets with the opportunity to enjoy wholesome home-cooked meals, requiring no planning, no shopping, and no hassle. Everything you need for weeknight meals are carefully planned, locally sourced, and delivered to your door.

Select your favorite dishes from 15 chef-curated weekly recipes

Schedule convenient deliveries and let HelloFresh take care of planning and shopping

Home Chef delivers everything you need to bring more delicious meals and moments to the table. Meals starting at $7.99 per serving. Easy-to-follow recipe cards and fresh, pre-portioned ingredients, delivered directly to you.

Once you sign up, you can customize your delivery dates and easily skip weeks within your account.

Our food system—the way in which food is grown and distributed—is complicated, and making good choices for your family can be difficult. We are changing that: By partnering with farmers to raise the highest-quality ingredients, by creating a distribution system that delivers ingredients at a better value and by investing in the things that matter most—our environment and our communities.

Martha & Marley Spoon sends the recipes of your choice and the fresh, pre-portioned ingredients you need to cook them directly to your door, so you can enjoy something new and delicious any night of the week. Cooking with Martha & Marley Spoon can cost less than buying groceries at the supermarket.

Ingredients are always pre-portioned, so there’s never any food waste.

Decide exactly what you’d like to cook from a menu featuring 10 new recipes every week, including customer favorites, healthy eats, and kid-friendly recipes.

Enjoy fine dining at home, and enjoy the opportunity to step up your home cooking!

Dinnerly is an affordable meal kit service designed with quick, easy weeknight cooking in mind that should please even the most picky of eaters. Every week, Dinnerly customers will receive a chilled box with fresh, seasonal ingredients to make three quick meals. Meals are very easy to make, coming with six or fewer ingredients, and customers can skip anytime.

Dinnerly is available nationwide, covering 93% of the U.S. population.

How do meal delivery services work?

A meal delivery service is a very useful service that delivers ready-prepared meals to the homes of customers. They are an ideal service for many people who find it difficult to shop or cook for themselves.

There are many different types of meal delivery service. Many, however, require customers to register for a subscription service for a specific amount of time, such as two weeks, a month, or for much longer. Some are more flexible with the range of time that they offer and can be customized to a degree to suit your needs. This includes how often they will be delivered to your home and on what days of the week.

Types of meal delivery services can vary between the provider shipping a meal that has already been prepared and simply needs to be heated up, to shipping the ingredients necessary to make the meal along with recipes cards for instructions. You may sometimes need a few extra ingredients with the latter option, but the meal delivery service will notify you if this is the case.

How Do Meal Delivery Services Work?

Starting to use a meal delivery service is an easy process that begins with you identifying your needs when it comes to finding what’s right for you and your loved ones. To begin, find the meal delivery service that works best for you by browsing through our reviews and selecting the best plan that meets your needs.

When signing up, pick a plan depending on your dietary preferences, schedule and the number of people you wish to feed. The services we have reviewed are all flexible in how they operate, so remember that you are always in control, as you can pause, modify, or cancel your subscription anytime.

From there, select the type of meals that you would like to have delivered to your home. Whether you are a vegetarian, on a low-calorie diet, or looking for something quick and easy, these meal delivery services provide a range of options for you to choose from when picking your meals.

The best meal delivery services provide well-cooked and tasty food presented in individual portions and fully labelled with all the necessary information, such as calorie content, allergy warnings, and other nutritional details. They are hygienically prepared by professional chefs and months of research and testing goes into each recipe.

Of course, meal delivery services should not be confused with takeaway delivery services, such as pizza, Chinese, and Indian takeaways. These are also known as fast food delivery services, which are different from the meal delivery services reviewed here.

Although these types of providers technically offer meal delivery services, they require orders to be placed individually rather than placing regular subscriptions. They also deliver on a per-order basis, ready to eat, and cannot offer the flexibility in delivery that the meal delivery services reviewed here can.

The popular image of a meal delivery service is the 'Meals on Wheels' service, which provided regular hot meals to the elderly and disabled. This was a worthy and admirable service but with the advent of online ordering, you may be surprised to learn that the consumer world of meal delivery services has exploded and is now beyond recognition, offering meals of all varieties to suit all tastes.

Read on to find out more about the latest trends in meal kit delivery and the different types of home delivery meals that are now available to make your life that little bit easier.

What Types of Meal Delivery Services are there?

There are many different types of home meal delivery services.

Type of services

Here is some information about the various different categories to help you decide which meal kit delivery service is right for you and your family.

Frozen

A frozen meal prep delivery service is perfect if you don't want to cook every day and if you want to order plenty of meals in advance. It can be a very economical option especially if you have a large freezer. In addition to this, it is a very flexible type of meal to order.

The meals are frozen after having been cooked and then cooled in professional kitchens and are delivered in their own clearly labelled containers. Choose from desserts, main courses and much more.

Kit

A meal kit delivery service is a type of service that sends customers pre-proportioned ingredients and a recipe card. This is a relatively new and trendy type of service that has grown in popularity with the help of promotions on social media websites such as Instagram and Facebook.

A meal kit delivery service enables people to cook freshly prepared meals at home without the effort of having to research, shop and prepare ingredients. All the hard work has been done for you - all you have to do is open up the packets and get cooking!

Prepared

A prepared meal delivery service is exactly what it says on the tin or the packet - a service that sends freshly prepared meals, ready to eat as soon as it arrives, to the homes of customers. Customers can order meals online, from a brochure or via telephone.

For Singles

If you live on your own and don't want a fridge full of leftovers, then a meal kit delivery service for singles is designed for you. Meals are delivered in generous portions for one.

This is ideal if you want to cut down on food waste and enjoy a range of freshly cooked and tempting meals.

Smoothies and Juice

Nutritious, delicious and refreshing - smoothies and juices have never been as popular as they are today.

These types of service either deliver the fruits and vegetables to your doorstep so you can make your own or deliver then ready prepared. Either way, with the help of these healthy meal delivery services, getting your five a day is completely hassle-free.

Wine Clubs

A wine club is a type of delivery service that delivers bottles of wine to your door. Choose from award-winning or hard-to-source wines from around the world, or simply your favourite red, white or rosé vintage.

Wine clubs often have promotions and great deals, and so they are great for oenophiles (wine lovers) and people looking to simply try something new.

Beer clubs

Members of beer clubs have exclusive access to premium craft beers delivered straight to your home address. Beer clubs usually have various types of subscriptions and commitment options - the best bargains are often to be had if you sign up for the longest period of time.

Other types of alcoholic drink are often included in beer clubs, such as whiskies and gins. These are excellent if you fancy yourself a connoisseur, or if you would like to sample something new.

Types of food

When trying to choose the best meal delivery service, it is always sensible to look at all the options that are available before signing up. Use our meal delivery service review comparison to help, as well as this guide to some of the different types of food that can be delivered.

Vegetarian

Vegetarian meals use high-quality meat-free ingredients to createdelicious and nutritious meals without you needingto do any of the tedious chopping and peeling.

If you find it hard to have a balanced vegetarian diet, a vegetarian meal delivery service is a great and super-easy way of adding variety to your weekly or monthly menu.

Vegan

A vegan meal delivery service is essential if you live in a busy household and want to ensure that the food you eat meets your standards. Vegan ready-prepared meals are completely plant-based, healthy, packaged in an environmentally friendly way and, most importantly, taste sensational.

Most vegan meal delivery services are so impressive, it is not surprising that more and more people are choosing to adopt the vegan lifestyle.

Paleo

Paleo eating is all about trying to eat as closely to the natural diets of our healthy hunter-gatherer ancestors as possible. Think lean meat, fruits and berries, low carbs, lots of raw plants and perhaps some basic grains, such as spelt or quinoa.

There are now many paleo meal delivery services offering authentic and tempting pre-prepared meals delivered straight to your home.

Diabetics

People with diabetes often need to follow a carefully monitored and balanced diet. This means making sure that each meal is packed full of the correct carbs, fats and proteins to ensure that you are getting the right foods to meet your needs.

Luckily, if you are diabetic, you can use our meal delivery service reviews to find the right companies who are offering healthy meal delivery services that you can always rely on.

Weight Loss

Losing weight is hard, but the good news is that home meal delivery services can really help you meet your weight-loss goals. You can quickly find the best meal delivery service for weight loss by going through our reviews.

The best meal delivery service for weight loss offers a range of appetizing calorie counted meals, nutritionally labelled for your convenience. Having a prepared healthy meal delivered saves time and undoubtedly helps to remove temptation!

Groceries

There are many delivery services that offer groceries rather than ready prepared meals or meal kits. Some specialize in vegetable boxes, with options such as an organic vegetable box and a choice of different sizes. This is great if you already have a recipe in mind, but never have the time to run to the store to pick up what you need.

As well as the major supermarket chains that offer grocery deliveries, there are many other smaller and more specialized companies that offer groceries with a selection of recipe cards. They are ideal if you like a source of inspiration to liven up weekly meals as well as ethically supporting smaller businesses.

Benefits of Using a Meal Delivery Service

There are so many advantages to regularly using a prepared meal delivery service. One of the most important is the fact that you will almost certainly save money.

You may find this surprising as meal delivery doesn't have the image of being a particularly budget-friendly option. However, when you sign up with the best meal delivery service for your requirements, it is highly likely that you will spend far less time shopping in a supermarket and making impulsive spending decisions.

Many customers report that they notice that their weekly food spending decreases enormously when they sign up for a new food delivery service, simply because they are no longer buying more than they need.

Another major benefit is the amount of time that you will save each week. You can order meals months in advance and then you no longer need to worry. Go to work each day and look forward to coming home to a meal that is either ready to pop in the oven/microwave or ready to assemble with the minimum amount of fuss.

Just think of the time saved when you are no longer waiting in line at the supermarket, planning meals trying to think of new ideas, and, of course, actually cooking and preparing them.